


Instrumental

by roronne



Category: Gatchaman Crowds
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1604567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roronne/pseuds/roronne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A problem shared is a problem halved. But if you think that's the only way to communicate, you really haven't had many friends. (Spoilers for Director's Cut/episode 12)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instrumental

Sugane hovered near his flatmate’s doorway, mentally repeating the same phrase for… for a minute or two, now. He’d lost track of how long he’d stood there; nervousness had seized him inches from the gap of the door.

Despite never having taken any other rookie under his wing, Sugane could list and explain in detail the basic functions of a NOTE at the drop of a hat.

Dissemination of information. You can write, speak, read messages to the others in the team without limit. J. J. and his lines of verse that flashed across the pages to guide you towards your mission, albeit in an archaic (not necessarily inconvenient) manner. Automatic, instantaneous notification when a mission or emergency was stated. It all came down to facilitating communication, he’d thought, before he’d witnessed its other functions.

It was the very incarnation of a soul, so how else could he have expected it to pass when Katze had torn Jou-san’s NOTE clean from his suit, ligaments torn and shards flying? Having it separated from your only form of protection left you more defenceless than you could ever be outside of the suit – that was Sugane’s first conclusion, after glimpsing Jou touch the spot on his back, brimming with morbid curiosity, for the fifth time after he’d healed.

But nothing could have prepared him – any of them – for the reverse to happen, for a NOTE to be forcibly integrated, crushed into another body and soul without pause, those seconds turned minutes of their teammate, his kouhai, their friend, crying with pain, Katze’s and her NOTE both resisting the merge. He didn’t know that was a function. None of them knew.

Hajime guessed that was the case. Which is why she’d done it; without the shock stalling them, they would have stopped her.

A soul in such a form was more vulnerable than practical, Sugane then concluded.

He gripped his NOTE in his palm, reminding himself between breaths that once, the book hasn’t felt so loaded with harmful possibilities, that on the surface and in the right hands nothing bad would happen. And that was… that was why he was going to entrust this to the right hands.

Why his resolve had steeled itself on a lazy weekend morning, away from training and from any responsibilities, Sugane didn’t know. Was it because he’d thought about it for so long, and now, near a source of his worries, an opportunity had arisen? Could this even be called an opportunity?  His voice bubbled up before he was certain, or at least convinced himself he was certain, he was ready for this. Her name felt like a sudden slash of a sword. “Hajime-“

“Senpai! ‘Sup!” she replied instantly, melodiously, as though unaware of her flatmate having dithered by her door for the last few minutes. “Come in, why don’t ya? Ah, I ran out of tea already though!” A clink of cutlery, the sound of stacking cups beckoned him in while his eyes searched for anything other than Hajime herself.

“Y- Yeah, I’m fine without…” Already nervous, Sugane was suddenly conscious of the act of entering a girl’s room – despite their relative comfort with one another already, her frequent interruptions in his room or his bringing drinks to hers when the rest of the team would visit – and the thought latched on, useless and aggravating his panic. He tried to combat it by consciously slackening his hold on both his NOTE and the mug of coffee he was still clutching, instantly deciding against it when the coffee lurched dangerously near the rim.

Maybe it helped that she hadn’t looked at him yet, her movements busy with copying dates from one colourful schedule to another, with a pile of pink cut-out paper flower motifs stacked by a glue stick. With attention drawn away from him, he tried to combat his nerves by reasoning why his presence there wasn’t weird: maybe she was planning something for _hanami_ , since, well, when _isn’t_ she busy, she must have a lot of people to organise, but it’s almost unusual that she had time to spend here on a Saturday morning amongst all her other commitments, in her lemon-yellow stay-at-home dungarees, not even wearing her wristwatch so she mustn’t have left the house yet, and even OD and Utsutsu probably sleeping in after last night’s Galax minigame marathon, leaving the two of them alone –

Back to square one; he forced his shoulders to lower, his core muscles to even out his breathing. Hajime still wasn’t looking at him, but cleared a little spot (precisely, dragging a striped pillow to the other side of the tea-table) in a vague ‘make yourself at home’ gesture. She was humming a three-note tune as she began to glue down the flowers indiscriminately across a page.

He wasn’t so sure anymore whether her lack of questioning was a good or a bad thing. Sugane lowered himself lightly to put down the mug. “I nee—want to ask you a favour.”

“Sure thing!”, again, chirped back without missing a beat. Her fingers looped around the mug handle to drag it amongst the mess of snacks already camping out on the table. “Oh, it’s cold! You’re done with this already?”

Sugane groaned, a restrained sound, standing up suddenly with his NOTE held before his face as standard. The motion drew Hajime’s eyes, and his thoughts leapt far ahead of his actions, taking in the surroundings. The tea-table remained mere inches from Hajime’s knees, for goodness’ sake, still merrily littered with half-eaten pudding cups and donut boxes. Any possibility of sudden movement knocking anything over didn’t seem to occur to Hajime, however – she’d only swivelled herself around on the floor as he clutched his NOTE, her eyes transfixed as ever on the brief light of transformation.

“It’s cool even without the ‘Bird, go’!” she marvelled. Sugane still couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze; it wasn’t any easier from behind his G-suit’s visor than outside of transformation.  Armour clinked as he crouched to the ground. At this point, at this level of tension, it wouldn’t seem stupid to beg her with his forehead to the floor. Couldn’t she just ask him what the favour was and save him this trouble – that, admittedly, he was only bringing upon himself?

“I want you to—“

“To what? You look ready to fight crime all on your own, senpai!”

“Let me finish!”

“You’re _so_ nervous!” She almost seemed impressed at this.

“Of course I’m nervous!” he cried – nervous about transforming for such a low-key reason, talking to her in this state, the constant edginess about the voice residing in her chest – “I have to know— about something that only the NOTE can do… that I want you to—“

“Senpai, question!”

“What, what is it now? I’m trying to speak to you honestly!” Between his exasperation and his drumming heartbeat he was ready to yank out his own NOTE like headphones just to escape this charade.

“Well, then, why are you in the suit? Would you only tell people important things over the phone? Your voice isn’t clear, you’re not even sitting, you’re all, you know – _zuki zuki_!” She made a flicking gesture with her fingers all at once as she said it. Sugane frowned. Was she imagining comic sound effects?  “And more than usual! Like a porcupine! Can you really be honest like this, senpai? Look, I’ll get us started, here!”

Unaware of his nervousness, of his spikiness all wrapped up in his G-suit (or perhaps she was only ignorant and accommodative – something only she could express, somehow), she made a show of turning off her phone to the tune of her humming, tipping all those cut-out flowers into a book and tidying her work away. Even the teapot had its lid replaced.

She was telling him to put everything aside.

His mouth twisted in apology; he silently changed out of his suit and set his NOTE on the tea-table, still glowing dimly from the energy that had filled it seconds earlier. Hajime didn’t change expression at all, her usual pinched-in smile and eyes wide and fascinated as he knelt in _seiza_ on a pillow. She nodded at his somewhat stiff-looking posture. “In the end, that’s the most comfortable for you, right, senpai!” She swung her legs around to face him, cross-legged. Casual.

Where would he start, if he was going to redo this? Sugane stayed on the verge of biting the inside of his cheek with anxiety, as though the pain would tell his body to get a grip – no chance. First, he had to make the connection Hajime seemed to be asking for.

He met her eyes. She didn’t blink, always smiling, even giggling in approval as he steadied himself, watching her. The already-fading eyeliner she’d only just learnt to apply since Rui began visiting, kohl that didn’t quite meet the edge of her eyelashes, a little sleep still there as a reminder of crashing to bed last night – thank goodness for little details to draw his attention. Sugane found his frown lessening and shoulders relaxing by mere degrees. Good a start as any. He remembered to take a breath this time.

“Remember when—“ Of course she remembered, she carried that fiend inside her every minute of the day – “when you… when you defeated Berg Katze. In the station, in front of us.”

“What about it?” Her reply was light-hearted, but he saw her wrist jerk, a safety response to ensure the second soul embedded in her chest was still locked up. He thought of Jou reaching around to touch his own back, then stretching his twisted elbow for hours afterwards, like a cat pretending it had never even cared about getting its paws wet.

“When – but, um, tell me if this isn’t okay to talk about – when that happened, you were in a lot of pain. You screamed for so long… Was it, that is…” Sugane’s gaze fell to his knees, but he could sense Hajime tilting her head curiously by the pigtail swinging in the corner of his eye. “Was it because you were holding Katze’s NOTE? Or because of…”

“Mm-mmm, that’s difficult. He did some pretty bad things but his NOTE itself, it wasn’t rotten, but it was like… it didn’t hurt to touch, no, no! It was the thing after that hurt the most!” He glanced back up to her, missing her eyes by seconds as she stared up at the ceiling in loud contemplation, her toes in soft bedroom socks curling and uncurling. “Hmmm, hmm _mmm_ , how do I say it to senpai…”

“If it’s difficult, you don’t have to.” _I don’t want to make it hurt again_ , he worried into his lower lip.

“The words are difficult, the feeling isn’t! Ah! That’s it!” She exclaimed with the solution in front of her. “It was like, suuuuuper invasive, but really weird, because _everybody_ was resisting, you know? I thought, ‘it hurts, but if he escapes, it’s all over’! But he was thinking, too, ‘if I get trapped, it’s all over’! And you know? I think even all my nerves were saying, ‘I don’t want either of these troubles, let me just give up’! But that wasn’t the right choice at all, in the end.” She shook her head as though gently chiding her past self. “Maybe it was… hm, not the _doki-doki_ that makes you want to hug someone… Something like that, I’d never ever felt it before. It was like I was going to pop out.”

“Pop… out?” Sugane couldn’t help repeating her, but she seemed to stick by her choice of words entirely. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with her wails and sobs of pain, writhing on the station floor, those sounds that drained the blood from him and left him cold just hearing her battle it out. She was talking about it like it was some kind of difficult arcade game.

“There’s only room for one me here, isn’t there? And if there’s another me in this space-“ Hajime almost moved to stand up, seemed to think the better of it, and gestured widely while minding the table at her elbow instead. “-it’s like, click, drag, file in use, like there wasn’t any space for a plus-one. It turned out well that I made space for Katze-san!”

“So... you’re saying, it was like you’d be replaced? In your own body?”

“Mm, mm! Hit the nail on the head!”

If that’s what she meant by ‘pop out’, then… “Maybe Jou-san felt that too, but it was over quicker…”

“Jou-san, too?”

“When he had his NOTE taken out of him.” The difference being, Katze had ripped it out _for_ him. There was no personal pain threshold he had to overcome. Sugane stayed quiet, his blood nearly boiling at the thought of it.

“Yikes… That’s bad. Maybe it was more, _crack_ , and it’s gone. Instead of forcing everybody to get along.”

He watched her face again for the first time since starting this conversation. She’d pulled her ankles closer to her body, still paying him due attention, but simply rocking very slightly to keep her energy going. How did it feel, he wondered briefly, to be so calm now after she had suffered like that, when on the other hand he was hyperaware of everything in that moment – his sweater bunching at his elbows, sweat turning cold at the back of his neck now that he felt calmer, his temples almost throbbing in the aftermath of his anxious frowning. He’d held her moments after her battle with Katze, and although she struggled comically and laughed through her whimpers that he was crushing her, she was shaking – but only barely. No more than you do after a particularly intense stretch.

What was the difference between strength and resilience, he wondered?

“I’m sorry that you—“ _Went through that_. He changed his mind, lowered his head, placed his hands in front of his knees. “I’m sorry.”

Hajime laughed; he felt sick. “Don’t be, don’t be! Although you did squeeze me reeeeally hard that time!”

“But if I had looked out for you better, that wouldn’t have happened! You went through all of that… that time the tunnel collapsed, too, and besides, if you’d only told us about your plan we could have all defeated Katze together – you shouldn’t have suffered! We would have had to fight, that’s it! We would have all won together! I never believed that anything worse than—“

Something tickled at the back of his neck that stopped the words in his choked-up throat. He scrambled at the sensation and sat up in a flash, Hajime leaning over him with a smile dancing on her lips as though mocking his wordless confusion. He drew the object from his nape, a paper flower from her schedule crumpled in the palm of his hand.

“I thought it’d stick while you were looking so cute and formal, and I was right!” She laughed into the silence of his speechlessness. “I don’t think it’s right to apologise when you didn’t hurt me, senpai.”

“But if I’d known, I could have done something… You, you and Jou-san both were hurt so much just trying to protect all of us when I was the one who—I’m such an _idiot_ —“

“Whoa, senpai, you sound like Jou-san now.”

“Jou-san isn’t an idiot!” Sugane blurted out, and for the first time he realised how stuck his throat was that his words were tripping up over one another, and felt his eyes burning hot and wet. He’d misunderstood her in his frustration and was expecting another peal of laughter, but it never came.  His vision blurred and he forced out another apology, catching the movement of Hajime’s fingers flexing towards her planner in search of something to fiddle with, but always stopping before getting entirely distracted.

He truly was an idiot if he was getting so caught up in himself all this time that he hadn’t noticed how she well she was coping, after all. He was worried, or had been worried, thinking that—he took a breath, pressed his knuckles into his knees in case the feeling would distract from his urge to cry.

“I suppose I thought that, maybe, you didn’t understand how bad of… a support I’d been. As a teammate, too, and as your senpai, but.” There was nothing more he wanted to do than pull his knees to his chest and curl up, but to his surprise, Hajime was already doing that; chin resting on her knees, she stared at him, attentive. Her fingers were locked under her thighs. Her hands were still.

He continued.

“I mean, I have no idea what it’s like to feel what you felt, but I think that when you work together, you should try to share things… Your way of thinking, your ideals. I always tried to understand what was important to Jou-san before I became a Gatchaman, but with you, with both of you, I…” The lump rose in his throat again. “How can I be this close to you and not understand what you felt? Am I ignoring it? Does that give me the right to stay being a Gatchaman, amongst you, when I haven’t—“

“Yeah, it does! I’m glad you finally told me, I thought you were really quiet but it turns out you had a lot to say!” Sugane blinked. “Senpai, you don’t know how it feels, but that’s okay, because it isn’t something you _have_ to do. It’s not an achievement! Different things for different people!”

Sugane let it sink in; the way she’d exclaimed it from her curled-up pose in exactly the same tone she’d once told him how dearly she wished for people to come together and get along. That was precisely part of the reason why he couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t it too idealistic, even for something coming from her, for someone like him?

“But I can’t just forget what happened to you and Jou-san,” he forced out with a dry mouth, rubbing his cheek worriedly. He searched her eyes again. “It’s my responsibility too.”

“ _How_ is it your responsibility?” Hajime cocked her head. It wasn’t meant as harsh, he knew, but it came out that way; that was her way of doing things. He still winced slightly. “You always say to take responsibility for your actions and act with responsibility but senpai, what are you talking about, _really_? Your responsibility as my senpai?”

He trembled. “I wanted to understand you, as…”

“As?”

“As a f, friend…”

There was a pause, in which the only sounds Sugane heard were his heart threatening to burst from his chest and the tick of a clock buried somewhere under Hajime’s bedcovers. She smiled – no, grinned, and held out her hand to him.

  
“Got it.” She didn’t follow up; Sugane glanced between her face and her offered hand, and delicately, unfolding his tight fist, took it. Her fingers were quick but gentle to grip on, like handling a light pair of scissors. “Then, pleased to meet you, senpai, treat me kindly and let’s be good friends! ”

“Yeah…”

Silence fell for long enough for him to look at this rather bizarre gesture (in his understanding; he hadn’t been one of the more contact-inclined Gatchaman), their hands clasped.

"So why'd you transform, senpai?"

Inadvertently, Sugane twitched and made an " _erk_ " sound as Hajime softly drew her palm from his; he hadn't been expecting her to bring it up, stamping his dumb idea down into his mind as he’d done, but then she just had a knack for mentioning exactly what you _didn’t_ want to talk about at that time. “I-It’s nothing! Please forget it.”

“Hmmm. Well, then, this guy looks like he could use a little sprucing up…” Without hesitation she reached for Sugane’s NOTE on the table with a glint in her eye. He panicked. “W- hey, you can’t…” – and, just as suddenly, backed down, steadily watching his NOTE picked up and turned over and over in her hands. Wasn’t this coming full-circle? Or a progression from her drawing him out of his transformation? Since she held the NOTE now—

“Mm, would blue or yellow suit him more, do you think…” she continued airily over his worrying. ‘ _Him’_ took Sugane off-guard for a second, complaining, “He—it doesn’t need decorations, Leader won’t like that. Wait, no, that’s not the point! Hajime!” He leant forward to clasp his hand over hers holding the NOTE (she blinked but instantly clapped another hand over his like an impromptu game of pat-a-cake, only adding to the tension making his pulse skyrocket).

“Listen, this is what I wanted to ask you,  I thought that maybe, if I transformed and you held my NOTE, I could understand what you and what Jou-san went through, but I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to, okay?”

To his surprise, her usual quick responses didn’t come; she dipped her head and his stomach lurched. _Shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have sprung it on her, should have just—_

“Senpai, you’re really trying too hard,” He felt her knuckles rise in the curve of his palm as she squeezed the NOTE beneath her thumbs, then drew one hand away to fan her fingers over her breastbone – he recognised the spot, the movement. Beneath her fringe her eyes darted around just as nervously as his had upon first entering the room. “Hurting just to feel pain… it’s pretty sad, you know. And kinda irresponsible, right? I mean… I don’t want senpai to be hurt.”

Her words felt final, such that a quiet clock ticking seemed to intensify to fill the silence of the room; but she gently wiggled her fingers beneath Sugane’s, her usual smile regaining ground on her face. “Never _ever_ ,” she said, and knelt forward suddenly to wrap both arms around her friend. He squawked—

A hug. She was hugging him, with so little room on either side of her squeezing that even without the inexperience in this area his arms could do little but hang stiff in the air by her ribs, his vision concealed by her pigtails and shoulder.

Sugane blinked, tried to glance at his kouhai in vain. ‘ _Rookie’_ formed itself on his tongue by sheer panicked instinct, but before he could question her, his hands conversely drifting to rest on her waist, she rocked forward to knock them both onto the ground (softly, thankfully, the rug and the pillows cradling them together) with her grip ever strong around his neck. Hajime seemed to be struggling to hug harder with her slender arms, withholding laughter.

Amongst the internal battle to not pay too much attention to any one aspect of her lying alongside him on her bedroom floor, the tea-table abandoned, he realised, _oh, this is payback_. Perhaps she wanted him to yell uncle. He bristled, warm with embarrassment, as she nuzzled against the side of his head (her hair tickling his nose), whispering, “You’re fine the way you are. …Sugane-kun.”

She burst into excited giggles before having even finished the honourific, the sound bubbling up around them like the fizz in soda, and Sugane – bright red, defeated – looped his arms loosely behind her shoulders, too worn-out to even wish himself to disappear. Not that she seemed to want that to happen.

“I won’t make any more stupid requests.” He murmured. And in her pleased giggling, he wondered if she meant, _if you do, this is how I’ll reply to them_.

**Author's Note:**

> Character study of sorts? I'm very rusty when it comes to dialogue and wanted to work it out. I also just wanted to explore a little of what had barely been touched upon in the Director's Cut.


End file.
